The Patrician eBook

She opened her paper languidly; and almost the first
words she read, under the heading of Election News,
were these:

’Apropos of the outrage on Mr. Courtier, we
are requested to state that the lady who accompanied
Lord Miltoun to the rescue of that gentleman was Mrs.
Lees Noel, wife of the Rev. Stephen Lees Noel, vicar
of Clathampton, Warwickshire.’

This dubious little daub of whitewash only brought
a rather sad smile to her lips. She left her
tea, and went out into the air. There at the
gate was Miltoun coming in. Her heart leaped.
But she went forward quietly, and greeted him with
cast-down eyes, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

CHAPTER XV

Exaltation had not left Miltoun. His sallow
face was flushed, his eyes glowed with a sort of beauty;
and Audrey Noel who, better than most women, could
read what was passing behind a face, saw those eyes
with the delight of a moth fluttering towards a lamp.
But in a very unemotional voice she said:

“So you have come to breakfast. How nice
of you!”

It was not in Miltoun to observe the formalities of
attack. Had he been going to fight a duel there
would have been no preliminary, just a look, a bow,
and the swords crossed. So in this first engagement
of his with the soul of a woman!

He neither sat down nor suffered her to sit, but stood
looking intently into her face, and said:

“I love you.”

Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness,
she was strangely calm, and unashamed. The elation
of knowing for sure that she was loved was like a
wand waving away all tremors, stilling them to sweetness.
Since nothing could take away that knowledge, it seemed
that she could never again be utterly unhappy.
Then, too, in her nature, so deeply, unreasoningly
incapable of perceiving the importance of any principle
but love, there was a secret feeling of assurance,
of triumph. He did love her! And she, him!
Well! And suddenly panic-stricken, lest he
should take back those words, she put her hand up to
his breast, and said:

“And I love you.”

The feel of his arms round her, the strength and passion
of that moment, were so terribly sweet, that she died
to thought, just looking up at him, with lips parted
and eyes darker with the depth of her love than he
had ever dreamed that eyes could be. The madness
of his own feeling kept him silent. And they
stood there, so merged in one another that they knew
and cared nothing for any other mortal thing.
It was very still in the room; the roses and carnations
in the lustre bowl, seeming to know that their mistress
was caught up into heaven, had let their perfume steal
forth and occupy every cranny of the abandoned air;
a hovering bee, too, circled round the lovers’
heads, scenting, it seemed, the honey in their hearts.